Frances Forrest, PhD, Part of Landmark Global Oldowan Study

Biological anthropologist and zooarchaeologist Frances Forrest studies early human behavior, stone tools, and ancient ecologies spanning nearly three million years.

Each summer, she heads to Kenya to conduct fieldwork, most recently at the Namorotukunan site in the Koobi Fora region near the Ethiopia-Kenya border. Getting there involves a three-day drive from Nairobi; researchers camp in 100-degree heat with limited electricity and “no stores or infrastructure.” But the effort is worth it for what the region holds.

For this particular project, Dr. Forrest was part of a team of roughly 20 researchers, 20 students, and support staff working in the field, contributing to a broader international effort bringing together archaeologists, geologists, and paleoanthropologists from universities and research institutions across more than a dozen countries. The field work is conducted in coordination with the National Museums of Kenya and with the support of the Daasanach and Ileret communities, who help make research in the remote region possible.

As Dr. Forrest explained, the site her team recently published on is extraordinary: “It’s the only evidence we have of continuous use of this really old early stone tool technology, which is called the Oldowan.” While it’s not the earliest Oldowan ever discovered, “it’s the oldest in this region” and—most remarkably—“it also persists for 300,000 years.”

The site preserves one of the longest sequences of Oldowan stone tools in the world, dating from 2.75 to 2.44 million years ago. Dr. Forrest’s specialty—zooarchaeology—helps link these tools to butchery practices and early meat eating, showing how early humans used technology to adapt to dramatic environmental changes over hundreds of thousands of years.

“Most sites are like a snapshot in time,” she explained. “This one shows a continuous sequence—artifacts passed down from generation to generation. It’s rare and remarkable.”

Fieldwork is grueling: carrying heavy sediment bags across steep hills in blistering heat and often walking for hours without finding anything. “This is the hardest place, logistically and physically, that I’ve ever worked,” she said.

The payoff is seeing how early technologies connect to the modern world. “It doesn’t seem like it,” Dr. Forrest said, “but this very simple, early technology… is leading into today where we rely on technology for our survival every single day. So, it is really a continuation—what we use as technology today, is the continuation of that practice, millions of years later.”

Beyond this discovery, Dr. Forrest’s work stretches into multiple projects. During her pre-tenure research leave, she’s been analyzing antelope teeth at the American Museum of Natural History. By studying microscopic wear patterns—“scratches and things on their teeth” that change “every single day”—she’s testing whether rainfall influences how animals feed. If the method works, she hopes to apply it to the fossil record to uncover whether ancient sites were used seasonally or year-round.

At the same time, she is preparing publications on a 2019 early butchery site and pursuing funding for “some of the oldest butchery in the world” discovered this past year.

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